Cullingworth nestles in Yorkshire's wonderful South Pennines and I have the pleasure and delight to be the village's Conservative Councillor. But these are my views - on politics, food, beer and the stupidity of those who want to tell me what to think or do. And a little on mushrooms.

Sunday, 9 July 2017

Don't be a shy conservative - you are the good people

I wrote this a while back - thought it worth sharing again:

For Conservatives “caring” doesn’t mean raising taxes from the relatively poor,
paying them to middle class professionals who then ‘care’ for the poor.
Caring is something we do personally – it is an individual act, done
without looking to a nice salary and an index-linked public pension.
Right wingers do not view charity as a sin

Conservatives seek out independence and self-reliance – our aspiration is
to provide for ourselves, to care (that word again) for our families,
to look out for our friends and to pay our way in the world without
recourse to the support of the state

As conservatives we do not see the words ‘business’ and ‘enterprise’ as problematic or slippery terms
only salvageable through the appending of the word ‘social’ – these
words are central of belief that, left to their own devices, people will
take advantage of the market’s natural laws to better themselves and,
in doing so, better society

Conservatives recognise the importance of place – not as something to be
managed, let alone created, by the agents of government but as the mud
on our boots, the soil in which we have settled and grown strong. And
the right to own that place – to be able to use our property as we see
fit – is essential to that understanding. Place without private property
is serfdom

And
lastly conservatives doubt and question the role and purpose
of government. It is not simply to echo Ronald Reagan’s joke – the most
frightening words in the English Language, “I from the government and
I’m here to help”- but to believe that independence, enterprise and the
busy-ness of hard work are driving betterment and that the state is,
most of the time, a barrier to a better place, a better society and
happier people